Quite good?? His TPR is 2658 so far & he's moved up from table 37 to table 17! Whether or not he's a genius may depend on your definition of the word, but basically he's kicking ass in this tournament. I suppose it could be a fluke, so let's all just take a deep breath & wait 'til April Fool's Day. If he turns in this kind of result again, he'll be a GM. That's gotta be worth more than beating the high score on Mario Brothers.

Who knows whether he is a genius but he is clearly playing great chess and it's great that we have a US kid who is competing at that level in an international tournament. I have heard that he is home schooled so you wonder what the ratio is of chess to math, english, history, science, phys ed, etc. or whether any of that matters if you have a kid with this kind of talent. Maybe it is better to pull them out of school to cultivate the talent.

I think he is a teenager but looks a lot younger. There was a piece about him and Onischuk at the USCF website and in the photo, he looked like a little kid in a giant parka trying to stay warm in the Russian winter.

I think he would be in 8th grade if he were in school full time so maybe 13 or 14 but pretty slight in terms of his frame so he could look younger. What is the youngest American GM? Is he trying to break that record?